XSL-FO Areas
XSL-FO uses rectangular boxes (areas) to display output.
XSL-FO Areas
The XSL formatting model defines a number of rectangular areas (boxes) to display output.
All output (text, pictures, etc.) will be formatted into these boxes and then displayed or printed to a target media.
We will take a closer look at the following areas:
- Pages
- Regions
- Block areas
- Line areas
- Inline areas
XSL-FO Pages
XSL-FO output is formatted into pages. Printed output will normally go into many separate pages. Browser output will often go into one long page.
XSL-FO Pages contain Regions.
XSL-FO Regions
Each XSL-FO Page contains a number of Regions:
- region-body (the body of the page)
- region-before (the header of the page)
- region-after (the footer of the page)
- region-start (the left sidebar)
- region-end (the right sidebar)
XSL-FO Regions contain Block areas.
XSL-FO Block Areas
XSL-FO Block areas define small block elements (the ones that normally starts with a new line) like paragraphs, tables and lists.
XSL-FO Block areas can contain other Block areas, but most often they contain Line areas.
XSL-FO Line Areas
XSL-FO Line areas define text lines inside Block areas.
XSL-FO Line areas contain Inline areas.
XSL-FO Inline Areas
XSL-FO Inline areas define text inside Lines (bullets, single character, graphics, and more).